Back العملية البولندية لمفوضية الشعب للشؤون الداخلية Arabic Polnische Operation des NKWD German Pola operaco de NKVD Esperanto Operación polaca del NKVD (1937-1938) Spanish عملیات لهستانی Persian Opération polonaise du NKVD French Operacja polska NKWD (1937–1938) Polish Operațiunea poloneză a NKVD-ului (1937–1938) Romanian Польская операция НКВД Russian NKVD'nin Polonya Operasyonu Turkish

Polish Operation of the NKVD

Polish Operation of the NKVD
Part of the Great Purge[1][2]
Memorial in Kraków
Location Soviet Union, modern-day Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and others
Date1937–1938
TargetPoles
Attack type
Prison shootings
Deaths+/− 111,091
Victims22% of the Polish population of the Soviet Union was "sentenced" by the operation (140,000 people)[3]
PerpetratorsNikolai Yezhov (NKVD), Joseph Stalin

The Polish Operation of the NKVD (Soviet security service) in 1937–1938 was an anti-Polish mass-ethnic cleansing operation of the NKVD carried out in the Soviet Union against Poles (labeled by the Soviets as "agents") during the period of the Great Purge. It was ordered by the Politburo of the Communist Party against so-called "Polish spies" and customarily interpreted by NKVD officials as relating to 'absolutely all Poles'.[citation needed] It resulted in the sentencing of 139,835 people, and summary executions of 111,091 Poles living in or near the Soviet Union.[4][5] The operation was implemented according to NKVD Order No. 00485 signed by Nikolai Yezhov.[6]

The majority of the shooting victims were ethnically Polish,[1] but not all, with some belonging to various minority groups from the Kresy macro-region, for instance, Ruthenians; these groups in the Soviet worldview had some element of Polish culture or heritage, and were therefore also "Polish".[7] The NKVD agents looked through local phone books to expedite the procedure and detained people with names that sounded Polish.[8]

While similar to other operations such as the Greek Operation, Finnish Operation, Latvian Operation and Estonian Operation, the Polish Operation was the largest ethnic shooting and deportation action during the Great Purge campaign of political murders in the Soviet Union.[9][10] According to official data, victims of the Polish Operation accounted for 41.7% of the sentenced people and 44.9% of the executed people during all such ethnic operations.[11]

  1. ^ a b Marek Jan Chodakiewicz (2011-01-15). "Genocide Not Mourned" [Nieopłakane ludobójstwo]. Rzeczpospolita. Presspublica. Archived from the original on 2012-10-04 – via Internet Archive.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  2. ^ Matthew Kaminski (October 18, 2010). "Savagery in the East". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 26, 2011.
  3. ^ Michael Ellman, Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932-33 Revisited Archived 2015-04-15 at the Wayback Machine PDF file page 686
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Gellately-Kiernan was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Wendy Z. Goldman (2011). Inventing the Enemy: Denunciation and Terror in Stalin's Russia. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 217. ISBN 978-0-521-19196-8.
  6. ^ Н.В. Петров; А.Б. Рогинский. ""Polish Operation" of the NKVD, 1937-1938" "Польская операция" НКВД 1937–1938 гг. (in Russian). НИПЦ «Мемориал». Archived from the original on February 15, 2017. Retrieved May 27, 2012. Original title: О фашистско-повстанческой, шпионской, диверсионной, пораженческой и террористической деятельности польской разведки в СССР
  7. ^ Timothy Snyder (2010). Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. New York: Basic Books. pp. 103–104. ISBN 978-0-465-00239-9.[permanent dead link‍]
  8. ^ Joshua Rubenstein (November 26, 2010). "Bloodlands - Europe Between Hitler and Stalin - By Timothy Snyder". The New York Times Book Review.
  9. ^ "A letter from Timothy Snyder of Bloodlands: Two genocidaires, taking turns in Poland". The Book Haven. Stanford University. December 15, 2010. Retrieved April 25, 2011.
  10. ^ Uilleam Blacker; Alexander Etkind; Julie Fedor (2013). Memory and Theory in Eastern Europe. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 21. ISBN 978-1137322067. Retrieved 18 February 2015. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  11. ^ Wielki Terror w sowieckiej Gruzji 1937–1938. Represje wobec Polaków (in Polish). Warszawa: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej. 2016. p. 38. ISBN 978-83-8098-080-8.

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